Project 1: Totally Tubular Tables!

Due Date Information

Out: Wednesday, February 19th

Design Checks: February 24th, 25th, 26th. Check your email to sign up for a design check with your design check TA. Remember to include your project partner in the Google Calendar invite when scheduling your design check! Your design check plan is due at 10PM EST the day before your design check.

In: Tuesday, March 4th, 11:59PM EST!

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Summary

It's time to try your data science skills on real datasets! For this project, we will be looking at density of grocery stores in different counties in the USA, producing a report that answers several questions that we've provided for you.

The project occurs in two stages. During the first week, before you start coding, you'll work on the design of your tables and functions, reviewing your work with a TA during a Design Check. In the second week, you'll implement your design, presenting your results in a written report that includes charts and plots from the tables that you created. The report and the code you used to process the data get turned in for the Final Handin.

This is a pair project. You can find your partner assignment here. Note that you have to work with different partners on the first two projects in the course (the last project is a solo project).

We suggest skimming the whole handout to get an idea of what is expected, then reading the design check instructions, and then opening up the data set to explore the questions in more detail. The overarching goal of this project is to answer the analysis questions and to write and test the summary-generator function (described below). The rest of this handout walks you through those goals.

Do not worry if you and your partner do not immediately arrive at the list of tasks necessary to complete the project – one of the skills you are practicing is how to break a large analysis down into smaller steps. The design check with your TA will be one opportunity to let you know if you are on the right track.

Resources

What Skills Does this Project Practice?

These high-level descriptions highlight the skills that you'll practice in this project:

preparing tables for use by cleaning up or detecting messy data
combining data across tables to answer a question
using plots and charts to display data
creating functions/helper functions to reuse common computations (for building the different summary tables)

We have done every one of these steps across lecture, homeworks 3 and 4, and labs 3 and 4. You have a lot to start from.

The stencil code (expand following spoiler) will load all of the tables and set up the libraries that you need.

Stencil

Copy and paste the following code to load the dataset into Pyret:

include gdrive-sheets
include data-source

import math as M
import statistics as S

# uncomment below if using bar-chart, pie-chart
# import bar-chart, pie-chart from shared-gdrive("dcic-2021", "1wyQZj_L0qqV9Ekgr9au6RX2iqt2Ga8Ep")

google-id = "17OCB7nDBepuvxHrDKB4qMPcI0_UHbTzNwMP_2s0WkXw" 

county-population-unsanitized-table = load-spreadsheet(google-id)

county-store-count-unsanitized-table = load-spreadsheet(google-id)

state-abbv-unsanitized-table = load-spreadsheet(google-id)

county-population-table = load-table: county :: String, state :: String, 
  population-estimate-2016 :: Number
  source: county-population-unsanitized-table.sheet-by-name("county-population", true)
  sanitize county using string-sanitizer
  sanitize state using string-sanitizer
  sanitize population-estimate-2016 using strict-num-sanitizer
end

county-store-count-table = load-table: state :: String, county :: String, 
  num-grocery-stores :: Number, num-convenience-stores :: Number
  source: county-store-count-unsanitized-table.sheet-by-name("county-store-count", true)
  sanitize state using string-sanitizer
  sanitize county using string-sanitizer
  sanitize num-grocery-stores using strict-num-sanitizer
  sanitize num-convenience-stores using strict-num-sanitizer
end

state-abbv-table = load-table: state :: String, abbv :: String 
  source: state-abbv-unsanitized-table.sheet-by-name("state-abbv", true)
  sanitize state using string-sanitizer
  sanitize abbv using string-sanitizer
end

The Data

The main dataset (county-store-count-table) indicates how many grocery and convenience stores are in counties across the USA. A second table (county-population-table) captures the populations of counties. A third (state-abbv-table) matches the two-letter state abbreviations with their full names. Take a moment now to view these tables in Pyret.

You will use these three tables to determine answers to some analysis questions., described below. You will produce a mix of code and charts to present your findings. You will also write a function (summary-generator) that can be used to generate summary data about a specific aspect of your dataset. The summary-generator function will allow the user to customize which statistic (such as average, sum, median) gets used to generate the table data.

The analysis questions

In your final report (not design check), you will answer the following questions. For reference, "combined stores" here refers to the sum of grocery and convenience stores. "Per capita" means "per person" (e.g. "combined stores per capita" refers to the total number of combined stores in a state divided by that state's population).

Q1: Which states have the highest variability (measured using standard deviation) of stores across counties?

Q2: What is the relationship (if any) between the population of a state and the number of combined stores in the state?

As part of Q2, you will also read this article about food deserts (you will refer to this article again in the Data-cleaning plan task), and reflect on how much insight this computation actually gives us.

Q3: What is the relationship (if any) between the population of a county and the stores per capita for the state the county is in?

Q4: Which 5 states have the largest ratio of convenience stores to combined stores?

In the reflection for this question, you will also be asked about categorization of convenience stores vs. combined stores in order to engage with where real-world data comes from and what the consequences are.

Understanding the Summary Table Generator

Imagine that there are many county-level store datasets and that you need to analyze the data by calculating different summary statistics. For example, in one case, you may need to find the total stores count over the counties in each state. Or in another case, you may need to find the mean (average) stores count over the counties in each state. This all requires a function that is flexible to which data it takes in and what kind of statistics it computes.

Your summary-generator will take in a table that contains the following columns:

"county": the county's name
"state": the county's state, either as the state's full name or abbreviation (your choice)
"num-stores-county": the total number of grocery and convenience stores in the county
"county-population": the county's population

For example, the input table might look like

| county        | state | num-stores-county | county-population |
| ------------- | ----- | ----------------- | ----------------- |
| county 1      | RI    |  num1.            |  num2.            |
| county 2      | CO    |  ...              |  ...              |
| county 3      | MD    |  ...              |  ...              |
| county 4      | SD    |  ...              |  ...              |
...

The summary-generator will also take in a summary function. The summary function will be a built-in Pyret function that summarizes a single column of a Table (such as sum, mean, etc). When you call your summary function in the summary-generator, it will take in a 'Table' and 'String' representing a column name from which to produce a single statistic. We will discuss the concept of functions as inputs on the 2/21 lecture!

The goal of your summary-generator is to figure out how to use the summary function and the input table to produce an output table with only these columns: "state", "abbv", "population", and "store-summary":

| state         | abbv  | population | store-summary      |
| ------------- | ----- | ---------- | ------------------ |
| Rhode Island  | RI    |  1,096,000 |  45,109            |
| Colorado      | CO    |  ...       |  ...               |
| Maryland      | MD    |  ...       |  ...               |
| South Dakota  | SD    |  ...       |  ...               |
...

Each row is a state. The population column contains the total population of that state. The "state", "abbv", and "population" columns will be the same for a given input table, no matter what summary function you give to your summary-generator. The store-summary column summarizes some statistic about the total number of stores across counties in that state, based on the summary function input.

For instance, if the mean function were passed into your summary-generator function, the store-summary column should contain the average value of total stores across all counties in the state for that row.

For the summary-generator function, use the following header:

fun summary-generator(t :: Table, summary-func :: (Table , String -> Number))-> Table:
  doc: ```Produces a table that uses the given function to summarize 
       stores across counties. The outputted table should also 
       have the population of every state.```
  ...
end

Here are some examples of using (calling) this function: summary-generator(mytable, sum) or summary-generator(mytable, mean).

Note: sum and mean here are built-in functions (that you do not write), as described above. Passing a function as an argument is like what you have done when using transform-column. The syntax summary-func :: (Table, String) -> Number means that the summary function takes in a Table and a String and produces a Number (just like sum and mean do in the Pyret documentation!).

Your summary-generator function should not reference any tables from outside the function except the provided state-abbv-table. While producing your output table, you should use state-abbv-table as a starting point, to build columns for the output table and to extract data from the input table t. Also, your output table should not contain any columns other than those shown in the example above: "state", "abbv", "population" and "store-summary."

Note: You do not need to test summary-generator. However, please run summary-generator twice outside of the function with two different summary functions. Make sure the output makes sense! This will look something like this:

fun summary-generator(...):
   # your code
end

summary-generator(your-input-table, func1)
summary-generator(your-input-table, func2)

Hints:

You will have to construct an example input table with the column names "state", "county," "num-stores-county" and "county-population" yourself. Plan out how you will do this in the design check! It will also help to manually create smaller input tables that you can use while developing the summary-generator.
The summary function will be called once for every state, using Table and String inputs, to generate the specific summary value for that state's row. Think about how you create those Tables out of the input table to summary-generator. For each state, what does the input table to the summary function look like in order to get the desired output? It may help to draw out an example table for a specific state.
Before you start the analysis questions, think about how you can use tables created by your summary-generator to answer some of them. What summary functions would you use? Understanding this question will go a long way in helping you understand the goal of the summary-generator function and the entire assignment.
Be mindful that some counties share names across states, so you might want to filter by both county and state.

Running summary-generator with smaller tables

When you reach the Implementation part of this project, you might encounter an issue where your smaller Tables cause summary-generator to raise an error, because not all states from state-abbv-table are represented in your smaller example Tables. In past years, we've seen this happen for summary functions like mean, because there is 0 data for the missing states, and you can't take the mean of a set of 0 numbers.

To get around this, you can first filter state-abbv-table to only include states that exist in the input Table t. You can also run your summary-generator only with example Tables that include all states, but those are harder to type out/reason about.

Phase 1: The Design Stage

The design check is a 30-minute meeting between your team and a TA to review your project plans, clarify conceptual misunderstandings, and give you feedback before the deadline (Asking questions is encouraged!). You do not have to have finished (or even started) coding up the project before the design check! Many students make changes to their designs following the check: doing so is common and will not cost you points, and might even save you some work when you do start coding. Before your design check, you will turn in a document with your work for the following tasks:

Design Task 1 – Understand Your Data: Use the stencil code to load the data set into Pyret. Look at the structure and contents of each provided table. In one place, create a reference sheet that you can refer to for the rest of the project and bring to the design check. Put the following on the reference sheet:

The exact names of each of the provided tables
The exact column names of each of the provided tables
One (or more!) example rows from each of the provided tables
Some representation of the relationships/common information between the tables. For example, if two different tables have columns with the same information, it may help to draw an arrow or use color-coded highlighting to show that on your document

You can also include any other information/notes that you find useful, but don't crowd the reference sheet too much. Ideally, it should fit on one or two pages so that it can be a useful at-a-glance guide.

Making a reference sheet like this will save you time as you consider the questions, make a design check plan, and start coding!

You should plan to bring your reference sheet to any office hours that you attend for this project.

Design Task 2 – Data Cleaning Plan: Look at your datasets and make a to-do list of the cleaning, normalization, and other pre-processing steps that will need to happen to prepare your dataset for use. (Hint: look for similar data in different tables that has different formats.)

Another way programmers clean data is by eliminating outliers. While you will not be eliminating outliers in this project, with your partner, reflect on the following questions (you do not have to put the answers in your design check document, but you will be asked to put them in your final report):

reflect on these questions:

What are the implications of throwing out outliers when data cleaning? In other words, what can happen when we don’t consider outlier populations in our analysis?

Apply your analysis to the topic of food deserts. If you haven't yet, read this article about food deserts and answer the rest of the questions based on what you learned.

In 1-2 sentences, describe what an outlier might look like for the grocery store dataset in this project.
Imagine you are a programmer working for a grocery store chain and using datasets to determine food delivery routes and other logistical tasks. What are two decisions a programmer could make based on a cleaned dataset that could heighten the negative impact of food deserts?

Design Task 3 – Analysis Plan: For each of the analysis questions listed above, describe how you plan to do the analysis. You should try to answer these questions:

What charts, plots and statistics do you plan to generate to answer the analysis questions? Why? What are the types and the axes of these charts, plots and statistics?
What table(s) will you need to generate those charts, plots and statistics? Try to give exact column names – the more specific you are, the better the feedback the TA can give.
For each of the tables that you will need, make a plan for creating that table. If you can create the table using summary-generator, name the summary function you will use. Otherwise, write out the tasks that you will need.

Design Task 4 – summary-generator Tables Example: Create two sets of tables that could be used as an input to summary-generator. For each set of tables, write out a specific function call to summary-generator using those tables, and create the corresponding output table. Use your reference sheet from the first task as a starting point! Define your example input Tables in Pyret, so that your example function calls use these Tables. Include this code in your document. These function calls won't run (since you haven't written summary-generator yet!), but we want you to think about how summary-generator would be run. In your design check document, draw out what you expect the outputs to look like (you only need to draw out what the rows would look like for states present in your test tables – take a look at the "Running summary-generator with smaller tables" note at the bottom of the summary generator section).

Design Task 5 – Partner Agreement: Have in writing an agreement for how you and your partner will work on the implementation (see the "working with your partner" section at the end of the handout). You can have this in email, but you will need to show something written to your Design Check TA.

Design Check Handin

By 10pm EST the day before your design check starts, submit your work for the design check as a PDF file to "Project 1 Design Check" on Gradescope. Please add your project partner to your submission on Gradescope as well so that there is one submission with both of your names attached to it. You can create a PDF by writing in your favorite word processor (Word, Google Docs, etc) then saving or exporting to PDF. Ask the TAs if you need help with this. Please put both you and your partner's CS login information at the top of the file.

Design Check Logistics

Please bring your work for the design check either on laptop (files already open and ready to go) or as a printout. Use whichever format you will find it easier to take notes on.
We expect that both partners have equally participated in designing the project. The TA may ask either one of you to answer questions about the work you present. Splitting the work such that each of you does 1-2 of the analysis questions is likely to backfire, as you might have inconsistent tables and insufficient understanding of the work done by your partner.
Be on time to your design check. If one partner is sick, contact the TA and try to reschedule rather than have only one person do the design check.

Design Check Grading

Your design check grade will be based on whether you had reasonable ideas for each of the design tasks and were able to explain them thoughtfully to the TA (for example, we expect you to be able to describe why you picked a particular plot or table format, but we won't dock points for picking a plot that isn't effective in the context of the question). Your answers do not have to be perfect (and you will not be docked points for asking questions!), but they do need to illustrate that you have thought about the questions and what will be required to answer them (functions, graphs, tables, etc.). The TA will give feedback for you to consider in your final implementation of the project.

Your design check grade will be worth roughly a third of your overall project grade. Failure to account for key design feedback in your final solution may result in a deduction on your analysis stage grade.

Note: We believe the hardest part of this assignment lies in figuring out what analyses you will do and in creating the tables you need for those analyses. Once you have created the tables, the remaining code should be similar to what you have written for homework and lab. Take the Design Check seriously. Plan enough time to think out your table and analysis designs.

Phase 2: Implementation and Reporting

To turn in this project, you will be handing in the following:

A Pyret file named analysis.arr that contains the function summary-generator, the tests for the function, and all the functions used to generate the report (charts, plots, and statistics).
A report file named report.pdf. Include in this file the copies of your charts and the written part of your analysis. Your report should address each of the analysis questions outlined for the dataset. Your report should also contain responses to the Reflection questions described below.

Note: Please connect the code in your analysis file and the results in your report with specific comments and labels in each. For example:

Sample Linking: See the comment in the code file:

# Analysis for question on cities with population over 30K

fun more-than-thirty-thousand(r :: Row) -> Boolean:
  ...
end

qualifying-munis = filter-by(municipalities, more-than-thirty-thousand)
munis-ex1-ex2-scatter = lr-plot(qualifying-munis, "population-2000", "population-2010")

Then, your report might look like this:

Guidelines on the Analysis

In order to do these analyses, you will need to gather data from multiple tables in the dataset. Each table uses slightly different formats of the information that links data across the tables (such as different date formats). You should handle aligning the datasets in Pyret code, not by editing the Google Sheets prior to loading them into Pyret. Making sure you know how to use coding to manage tables for combining data is one of our goals for this project. Also, think about how you can use tables created by your summary-generator in some of your analysis. Using list function for this assignment is NOT allowed, even if they are in the Tables documentation. Pyret String documentation might be your friend!

Hint: If you feel your code is getting too complicated to test, add helper functions! You will almostly certainly have computations that get done multiple times with different data for this problem. Create and test a helper or two to keep the problem manageable. You don't need helpers for everything, though – for example, it is fine for you to have nested build-column expressions in your solution. Don't hesitate to reach out to us if you want to review your ideas for breaking down this problem.

This is where your summary sheet from the first design step task will come in handy! Feel free to add the helper function descriptions to that sheet.

Report

For each analysis question, your report should contain any relevant plots (and tables, if you find them helpful as well), any conclusions you have made, and your reflection on the project (see next section). We are not looking for fancy or specific formatting, but you should put some effort into making sure the report reads well (use section headings, full sentences, spell-check it, etc). There's no specified length – just say what you need to say to present your analyses.

Note: Pyret makes it easy to extract image files of plots to put into your report. When you make a plot, there is an option in the top left hand side of the window to save the chart as a .png file which you can then copy into your document. Additionally, whenever you output a table in the interactions window, Pyret gives you the option to copy the table. If you copy the table into some spreadsheet, it will be formatted as a table that you can then copy into Word or Google Docs.

Reflection

Include the following reflection in your project:

Data cleaning: answer these questions that you thought about in the design check:

What are the implications of throwing out outliers when data cleaning? In other words, what can happen when we don’t consider outlier populations in our analysis?
In 1-2 sentences, describe what an outlier might look like for the grocery store dataset in this project.
Imagine you are a programmer working for a grocery store chain and using datasets to determine food delivery routes and other logistical tasks. What are two decisions a programmer could make based on a cleaned dataset that could heighten the negative impact of food deserts?

Reflection on Q2 computation: Answer this question after your Q2 analysis:

If you saw someone making an argument about the existence of food deserts based on just this computation, what would your response be?
- Your answer should describe the trustworthiness of a claim based on this single analysis.
- Consider the level of detail in the analysis (state vs. county) and the numbers being compared (are population and combined stores sufficient for drawing conclusions, or would some other quantities be more useful?)

Reflection on Q4 computation Answer these questions after your Q4 analysis:

According to the article about food deserts, what might large concentrations of convenience stores (as opposed to grocery stores) indicate?
How do you think stores are categorized as grocery stores vs. convenience stores? Who gets to make that distinction?
In a large dataset such as this one, categorization mistakes (such as labeling a convenience store as a grocery store) are very likely. How does this change how you might present or write about the conclusions you made in this task?

Categorization reflecion

For this task, include your answer for the "Research task" (last paragraph).

In Homework 2, we asked you to research an issue (having to do with programming or otherwise) that may have been prevented with more intentional efforts for diversity, equity, and inclusion. In many of the case studies (see compilation here!), we can think about the power of design choices through these questions (we are not asking you to give answers to these questions in the writeup): 1) How can design choices cause harm or exacerbate existing harm? and 2) On the flip side, how can design choices prevent harm?

In the case of this project, we see that there was a root cause to the seemingly “neutral” distribution of convenience stores and grocery stores. More specifically, you as programmers categorized grocery and convenience stores together, which impacted the results of your data visualizations. The last part of this assignment explores explicit categorization choices made by programmers that either expose or hide evidence of systemic harm.

Amy J. Ko and Anne Beitlers come up with an outline of how technology interacts with systems of oppression to do harm.

“There are many reasons why computing may have tendencies toward peril and oppression. Some of them are similar to those for any technology: in an unjust, oppressive world, technology is bound to be used for unjust, oppressive ends. However, there are specific aspects of data and algorithms that seem to make computing uniquely perilous, especially when they interact with underlying systems of oppression in society.”

This chapter outlines five ways technology can interact with systems of oppression:

Amplification
Centralization
Privatization
Automation
Abstraction

Skim the section that follows here. Which of these five interactions (it can be more than one) do you think categorization falls under? (You are not required to write your answer down!)

In this assignment we are interested in how explicit design choices and decisions of categorization create, perpetuate or prevent harm. For instance, in 2019 dating app Tinder added a sexual orientation feature to aid LGBTQ+ matching, allowing users to select up to three terms that best describe their sexual orientation within an “orientation” tab in its app. This is an explicit design choice for users to self identify with the sexual orientation labels they feel most comfortable with. (Please do not use this example in your final write-up).

Research a real life example (you may reuse one or both examples that you/your partner submitted in HW2 if it fits this criteria) and explain how the design choice of categorization caused or prevented systemic harm. Keep in mind that almost every harm caused by categorization can be described using a systemic lens; in other words, be sure to explain how individual harm can be tied back to a systemic root cause.

Self-reflection Answer these questions after you have finished the coding portion of the project:

Describe one key insight that each partner gained about programming or data analysis from working on this project and one mistake or misconception that each partner had to work though.
Based on the data and analysis techniques you used, how confident are you in the quality of your results? What other information or skills could have improved the accuracy and precision of your analysis?
State one or two followup questions that you have about programming or data analysis after working on this project.

Final Handin

For your final handin, submit one code file named analysis.arr containing all of your code for producing plots and tables for this project. Also submit report.pdf, which contains a summary of the plots, tables, and conclusions for your answers to the analysis questions as well as your project reflection. Nothing is required to print in the interactions window when we run your analysis file, but your analysis answers in report.pdf should include comments indicating which names or expressions in analysis.arr yield the data for your answers.

Final Grading

You will be graded on Functionality, Design, and Testing for this assignment.

Functionality – Key metrics:

Does your code accurately produce the data you needed for your analyses?
Are you able to use code to perform the table transformations required for your analyses?
Is your summary-generator function working?

Testing – Key metrics:

Have you tested your functions well, particularly those that do computations more interesting than extracting cells and comparing them to other values?
Have you shown that you understand how to set up smaller tables for testing functions before using them on large datasets?

Design – Key metrics:

Have you chosen suitable charts and statistics for your analysis?
Have you identified appropriate table formats for your analysis tasks?
Have you created helper functions as appropriate to enable reuse of computations?
Have you chosen appropriate functions and operations to perform your computations?
Have you used docstrings and comments to effectively explain your code to others?
Have you named intermediate computations appropriately to improve readability of your code? This includes both what you named and whether the names are sufficiently descriptive to convey useful information about your computation.
Have you answered all parts of the reflection questions?
Have you followed the other guidelines of the style guide (line length, naming convention, type annotations, etc.)

You can pass the project even if you either (a) skip the summary-generator function or (b) have to manipulate some of the tables by hand rather than through code. A project that does not meet either of these baseline requirements will fail the functionality portion.

A high score on functionality will require that you wrote appropriate code to perform each analysis and wrote a working summary-generator function. The difference between high and mid-range scores will lie in whether you chose and used appropriate functions to produce your tables and analyses.

For design, the difference between high and mid-range scores will lie in whether your computations that create additional tables are clear and well-structured, rather than appearing as you made some messy choices just to get things to work.

Working with Your Partner

We expect that both partners are involved in the work of this project. Specifically, this means:

You do the design work together and present your ideas to your design-check TA together.
You cooperate on the implementation. There are multiple ways to do this:
- Write the code for both parts working mostly together
- Each work on individual functions separately, but while working in proximity (same room, online together, etc)
- Each write some parts and check in periodically to agree on the code that gets submitted

How you arrange your work is up to the two of you. As part of your design check, you will indicate how you plan to do the implementation work.

Be respectful of each other's time. If you agree to meet to work on the project, show up as scheduled. If you agreed to get certain work started prior to a meeting, come with that work started. This is basic professionalism.

What if a partner stops responding? Get in touch with your design check TA, Milda, and the HTAs if your partner becomes unresponsive, whether that means they are not doing their share or they are doing the work alone and leaving you out of it. Neither is acceptable.

You will only get credit for a project that you actively participated in. If you left your partner to do all of the implementation work, you will not get credit for that portion of the project.

Brown University CSCI 0111 (Spring 2025)
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